About wallpapers

I wouldn’t say I always used to pay attention to interiors but I have a very vivid memory of walking through my grandma’s house when I was about 4 years old, thinking: ”Why would someone glue these ugly sheets of paper on their walls?”
The house was old and the wallpapers were damaged, even peeled in corners. Not just the design, but the entire idea of using wallpapers for covering walls was outdated. I couldn’t know any of this as a four-year-old, but I was aware of the fact that wallpapers belong in grandma’s house.

Do you remember those old wallpapers? Those were the worst. However, just like any commonly used, old fashioned material, they were perfect for reinterpretation. Also, just like any blank sheet of paper, they have endless possibilities.

The most important thing to remember about wallpapers is that they are made of paper. Do you remember that there is no shame in having tiles on your walls? There is also no shame in not having tiles on your walls. Don’t choose wallpapers that imitate tiles, bricks, wood, marble – we’re sure you know that every material is pretty as long as it doesn’t pretend to be any other material.

But, like we said, wallpapers are, in fact, paper – which means that many things can be “drawn” on them and that previously said rule can be stretched. There are amazing interiors with nature inspired wallpapers that don’t try to look like anything but wallpapers. And the ones with wallpapers that are inspired by (but not an imitation of) natural materials.

We often say that all it takes to design an amazing interior is one inspired idea. When it comes to wallpapers, we believe that game-changing idea was to cover only one wall (preferably the one without any openings). Think of it as an outfit – you would probably choose simple, solid color pants with a printed shirt.

Wallpapers are a great way to instantly create certain kind of ambient. For example, to achieve cozy feeling in your apartment, you need all kinds of different textures and fabrics, why not using wallpapers as one of them? We say they are made of paper, but the truth is they can be made of spacial kind of fabric.

A popular solution for nursery rooms are wallpapers with all kinds of playful motifs. It seems to us that parents like to choose a theme for their baby’s room, and this really is the simplest way to do that.

It’s probably no surprise that these are our favorites. You see, our college professor, who mostly designed kindergartens, used to say that children are much more serious than we think. They don’t naturally respond better to colorful cartoon characters or smiling animals, it is something we teach them. It is never too early to create the environment with aesthetic value for your kids.

We wrote about designing a studio apartment before, and one of the most challenging tasks in that type of projects is how to eliminate the visual presence of the bathroom door in the main room. To be honest, that’s one of the basic rules in the apartment design: to have at least one secondary room between living room or dining space (we usually say to have at least two doors to the toilet). This is very hard to achieve when the apartment is small, but wallpapers can help.

Imagine the wall with the door that leads to the bathroom. Imagine it covered with wallpaper, wall as well as door frame (which is in line with the wall) and door wing. All you can see is a thin joint around the door wing. We just love those kinds of ideas.

At the beginning of this post, we said that just like with any plain sheet of paper, possibilities with wallpapers are endless. To prove it, take a look at this amazing, not just wallpaper but a true artwork (and we are not someone who uses that term loosely).

This is hand-drawn, scanned, enlarged and printed out on white wallpaper sheets. How cool is that? And we are not someone who usually describes something as cool (not on a blog anyway) but this really left us speechless. Do you see how wallpapers can instantly create a certain kind of ambiance?

We would love to say that wallpapers are easy to DIY – putting them up, not making your own, we would never say it is easy to make your own. But don’t do that, it’s really not something anyone can do. We tried. And failed so badly.

ABOUT US

We are Tina and Petra, two aunts, architects and blog partners at upgradesign.blog.
Our mission is to provide simple, useful and inspirational tips to help you design functional, clutter-free and beautiful personal space.